In november 2013 I found an E30 I wanted(or at the time I thought I wanted it) I set up a time to check out the car, it was dark, cold, and wet. I paid probably too much for the car, but there's practically no rust anywhere, only where the shitty ricer tires rubbed off the paint on the fenders, and its only surface rust.
I bought the car and brought it home, and it looked something like this.
The car was on huge STR 17x10 wheels with stretched tires all to hell, it was also on cut springs and road like an absolute turd. Notice how the words and shit on the sidewalls were completely worn off.
The original gauge cluster that came with the car had a shit load of miles on it, like 350xxx. Neither me or my mechanic believed that the m42 in the car had that many miles on it. Besides a somewhat bad oil leak it didn't burn oil, run rough or anything. Also, it was my first time removing the gauge cluster from an E30, so i just kinda said fuck it, broke both the clips and had to source another cluster.
The first step was to get rid of wheels, and get it off the cut springs. About a month after buying the car I had already started to throw all my money at it.
Traded my 17x10's for a set of 14" basketweaves because I didn't care.
The car was starting to get better
Sourced a used set of bilsteins as well as H&R and Eibach springs, and had them installed by the E30 shop. I finally got it off cut springs!
I started researching engine swaps and decided that since the m42 was leaking oil pretty severely that it was time.
Sourced a 1996 328ic automatic with unknown mileage, but with solid compression test numbers.
And so it began. RUN IT!
Sourced a getrag 260 and driveshaft from a 325e, don't have pictures sorry
Here is a picture of the modified tranny bracket.
And here she is sitting nicely in my E30, with lots left to finish.
Here's a picture of the 3inch exhaust made by Kevin at the E30 shop, he did all the work on the swap. I had plans of eventually turboing the car, so this was ideal for my goals.
Here everything is hooked up and working, still had a few issues to sort out, but everything was coming together nicely. Had a speed sensor issues that was limiting me to 5500 rpm, and a bad maf that was causing lots of problems.
Was driving the car around, had my brother and another friend in the car, and we were cruising. All of sudden I couldn't shift, so I parked it and called someone to bring me some brake fluid. Filled it up some more, pump the clutch a million times and limped it home.
Took off the slave cylinder to replace it, and the pictures tell the rest of the story.
Picked out some wheels and tires and got to work fitting them, this was a major pain in my ass. The wheels are 15x8 et25 enkei classics, with 225/45r/15 hankook ventus rs-3 version 2 tires. The back side of the wheel contacted the strut in the front, so I ordered spacers and tried to make them fit. After ordering cheap and shitty spacers about 3 times and wasting hundreds of dollars I was fed up and let the wheels and tires sit in my room for months.
I finally got the proper 12.5mm hubcentric spacers that I needed, and installed them. The front wheels stick out quite a bit, but they never contact the fender so I was pleased and on my way, run it!
Decided I wanted to get a BBK, but saw how expensive they were. Started researching and discovered the rx7/vw corrado brake kit. Purchased all the parts, and sat on them for a while until I had enough garage space to store it indoors and work on it.
The brakes installation turned out to be pretty challenging as well. Some of the mounting hardware such as the bolts that hold the caliper and bracket were too long and touched the rotor. After much head scratching, a few emails, and a trip to the hardware store later I had the problem resolved. I probably mounted and removed those rx7 calipers 20 times, testing fitment, grinding away more heat shield, trying it again, over and over. My car sat in the garage for weeks, it felt like an eternity. I was so tired of fucking with those brakes that I let it sit for weeks before I felt like working on it again.
Spiders began to take over the car, so I bought multiple cans of spider killer and waged chemical warfare until they were all dead.
Finally when I got the calipers and rotors properly mounted I discovered what I had already suspected to be a huge problem. Even with the 12.5mm spacer my wheels still hit the caliper on the front. I ordered some expensive 25mm bolt on spacers and fixed that problem. Now the wheel REALLY stick out the fenders, but I still don't really give a damn, RUN IT! I also put the 12.5mm spacers on the rear so they sit a little bit more flush.
All finished with the brake install, I was loving the wheel fitment at this point.
Sorry for massive pictures, imgur all of a sudden won't let me resize them. The option to change the size just isn't there anymore I'll just post the links because the pictures are fucking HUGE.
I had also started buying turbo parts, actually I was on a binge buying turbo goodies.
It was somewhat pointless, because come to find out I wouldn't end up using alot of it.
This stuff sat In my closet for months before I decided what to do.
I finally decided that I would never be able to turbo the car myself, it was way too much work.
So I bit the bullet, sold my first born child and trailered the car to Atlanta, GA. Technica motorsports, here we come! These guy's have a reputation for being the best, and they are worth every penny. I've dealt with quite a few shops working on my E30. None can even compare to the level of professionalism and quality you get from technica. I get multiple emails a week telling me the progress that has been made on my car. Every expense is documented and updated to an excel spreadsheet. These guys are top notch, their shop is extremely clean, like clean enough to do surgery in. It's beautiful to see in person, you can really tell that they have a passion for what they do, and are damn good at it too.
Check out their facebook, their pictures are like bmw and race car porn. https://www.facebook.com/TechnicaMotorsports?fref=ts
So here is my car, surrounded by m3's 1400hp 2jz widebody m5, etc. My car has never looked this happy before.
We ended up going with a gt35r, not using any of the oil cooler components except for the actual oil cooler and lines. Using a synapse BOV instead of the tial Q, and many other changes to the build.
The car should be on the dyno sometime this week, so more pictures and videos to come!
I bought the car and brought it home, and it looked something like this.
The car was on huge STR 17x10 wheels with stretched tires all to hell, it was also on cut springs and road like an absolute turd. Notice how the words and shit on the sidewalls were completely worn off.
The original gauge cluster that came with the car had a shit load of miles on it, like 350xxx. Neither me or my mechanic believed that the m42 in the car had that many miles on it. Besides a somewhat bad oil leak it didn't burn oil, run rough or anything. Also, it was my first time removing the gauge cluster from an E30, so i just kinda said fuck it, broke both the clips and had to source another cluster.
The first step was to get rid of wheels, and get it off the cut springs. About a month after buying the car I had already started to throw all my money at it.
Traded my 17x10's for a set of 14" basketweaves because I didn't care.
The car was starting to get better
Sourced a used set of bilsteins as well as H&R and Eibach springs, and had them installed by the E30 shop. I finally got it off cut springs!
I started researching engine swaps and decided that since the m42 was leaking oil pretty severely that it was time.
Sourced a 1996 328ic automatic with unknown mileage, but with solid compression test numbers.
And so it began. RUN IT!
Sourced a getrag 260 and driveshaft from a 325e, don't have pictures sorry
Here is a picture of the modified tranny bracket.And here she is sitting nicely in my E30, with lots left to finish.
Here's a picture of the 3inch exhaust made by Kevin at the E30 shop, he did all the work on the swap. I had plans of eventually turboing the car, so this was ideal for my goals.
Here everything is hooked up and working, still had a few issues to sort out, but everything was coming together nicely. Had a speed sensor issues that was limiting me to 5500 rpm, and a bad maf that was causing lots of problems.
Was driving the car around, had my brother and another friend in the car, and we were cruising. All of sudden I couldn't shift, so I parked it and called someone to bring me some brake fluid. Filled it up some more, pump the clutch a million times and limped it home.
Took off the slave cylinder to replace it, and the pictures tell the rest of the story.
Picked out some wheels and tires and got to work fitting them, this was a major pain in my ass. The wheels are 15x8 et25 enkei classics, with 225/45r/15 hankook ventus rs-3 version 2 tires. The back side of the wheel contacted the strut in the front, so I ordered spacers and tried to make them fit. After ordering cheap and shitty spacers about 3 times and wasting hundreds of dollars I was fed up and let the wheels and tires sit in my room for months.
I finally got the proper 12.5mm hubcentric spacers that I needed, and installed them. The front wheels stick out quite a bit, but they never contact the fender so I was pleased and on my way, run it!
Decided I wanted to get a BBK, but saw how expensive they were. Started researching and discovered the rx7/vw corrado brake kit. Purchased all the parts, and sat on them for a while until I had enough garage space to store it indoors and work on it.
The brakes installation turned out to be pretty challenging as well. Some of the mounting hardware such as the bolts that hold the caliper and bracket were too long and touched the rotor. After much head scratching, a few emails, and a trip to the hardware store later I had the problem resolved. I probably mounted and removed those rx7 calipers 20 times, testing fitment, grinding away more heat shield, trying it again, over and over. My car sat in the garage for weeks, it felt like an eternity. I was so tired of fucking with those brakes that I let it sit for weeks before I felt like working on it again.
Spiders began to take over the car, so I bought multiple cans of spider killer and waged chemical warfare until they were all dead.
Finally when I got the calipers and rotors properly mounted I discovered what I had already suspected to be a huge problem. Even with the 12.5mm spacer my wheels still hit the caliper on the front. I ordered some expensive 25mm bolt on spacers and fixed that problem. Now the wheel REALLY stick out the fenders, but I still don't really give a damn, RUN IT! I also put the 12.5mm spacers on the rear so they sit a little bit more flush.
All finished with the brake install, I was loving the wheel fitment at this point.
Sorry for massive pictures, imgur all of a sudden won't let me resize them. The option to change the size just isn't there anymore
I'll just post the links because the pictures are fucking HUGE.I had also started buying turbo parts, actually I was on a binge buying turbo goodies.
It was somewhat pointless, because come to find out I wouldn't end up using alot of it.
This stuff sat In my closet for months before I decided what to do.
I finally decided that I would never be able to turbo the car myself, it was way too much work.
So I bit the bullet, sold my first born child and trailered the car to Atlanta, GA. Technica motorsports, here we come! These guy's have a reputation for being the best, and they are worth every penny. I've dealt with quite a few shops working on my E30. None can even compare to the level of professionalism and quality you get from technica. I get multiple emails a week telling me the progress that has been made on my car. Every expense is documented and updated to an excel spreadsheet. These guys are top notch, their shop is extremely clean, like clean enough to do surgery in. It's beautiful to see in person, you can really tell that they have a passion for what they do, and are damn good at it too.
Check out their facebook, their pictures are like bmw and race car porn. https://www.facebook.com/TechnicaMotorsports?fref=ts
So here is my car, surrounded by m3's 1400hp 2jz widebody m5, etc. My car has never looked this happy before.
We ended up going with a gt35r, not using any of the oil cooler components except for the actual oil cooler and lines. Using a synapse BOV instead of the tial Q, and many other changes to the build.
The car should be on the dyno sometime this week, so more pictures and videos to come!
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